Endocrine disturbers: sacrificing health to trade?

For nearly seven years, the European Union has tried to legislate against endocrine disruptors. Amid intense debate surrounding the impact of these new measures, a number of recent studies have shown that the EU’s trading partners, notably the United States and Canada, significantly influenced the committee’s work on this issue.

By
voting on January 12 to approve the ratification of CETA, the free
trade treaty between the European Union and Canada, members of the
European Parliament’s environment committee have missed an
excellent opportunity to weigh in on trade negotiations in order to
advance environmental and health regulations. For nearly seven years,
the European Union has tried to legislate against endocrine
disruptors. Amid intense debate surrounding the impact of these new
measures, a number of recent studies have shown that the EU’s
trading partners, notably the United States and Canada, significantly
influenced the committee’s work on this issue.

Endocrine
disruptors are chemical substances found in numerous products that
interfere with our hormonal systems. They are found in food,
wrapping, cleaning products, cosmetics, furniture, and so on. The
connection between exposure to these substances and a large number of
disorders such as cancer, diabetes, obesity, infertility, and brain
development problems has been clearly established. Within the EU,
their estimated
cost to society is believed to
amount to 160 billion euros in additional health costs each year.
According to expert opinion, the best way to eliminate this problem
would be to prevent exposure to these substances through tougher
regulations.

Towards
European legislation?

In
2009, the European Parliament approved new regulations for pesticides
that banned from the market products identified as endocrine
disruptors, except in cases when exposure was deemed negligible. To
implement this text, the European Commission was required to
formulate, by the end of 2013, proposals that would define criteria
for identifying endocrine disruptors. Due to its inaction, the
Commission was condemned by the Court of Justice of the European
Union in December 2015.

One
must admit that Commission encountered many obstacles along its path.
In early 2013, a first set of definitions was issued by the
Commission’s Directorate-General for Environment, which at the
time was in charge of the dossier. Vigorously denounced by
industrialists, this proposal was abandoned in the summer of 2013 and
the dossier was withdrawn from the Environment DG’s purview.
Not until June 2016 was another, far less ambitious proposal
submitted. It introduced a new method for assessing the risk of
endocrine disruptors, on a case-by-case basis following their arrival
on the market, as well as exemptions based on “negligible risk
following exposure” rather than “negligible exposure,”
thus introducing a significant loophole into the system.

An investigation
by Le Monde
published in late December revealed that the Directorate-General for
Health and Food Safety had, in September 2012, already determined
that it would not follow the Parliament’s recommendations
relating to product assessment and would try to influence the
European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). Thus the conclusions issued by
this organization in March 2013, and on which the European
Commission’s proposal drew considerably, had in fact been
reached in late 2012, before it had even begun its work. Le
Monde further indicated
that the EFSA deliberately chose to disregard a joint report by the
World Health Organization and the United Nations Environment Program
published in April 2013, which recommended treating disruptors as a
“global threat that needs to be resolved.” The study also
addressed efforts made by the private sector to convince the
Commission that this issue was the object of scientific controversy.
They constitute a full blown attempt to “manufacture doubt,”
which was denounced in an
editorial published on the
same day as the study by around a hundred researchers. In their view,
this “distortion of scientific proof by industry-financed
actors” closely resembles practices associated with the tobacco
industry and climate change deniers.

Pesticide
producers on the offensive

The
Commission’s proposal is a long way from being approved. In a
letter to Health Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis in September 2016,
the chair of the European Parliament’s environment committee
expressed concern that the Commission would exceed its competencies
by proposing legal acts that modified “essential features”
of the regulations initially adopted by parliament. France, Sweden,
and Denmark confirmed this warning in a note from December 2016. The
final
proposal, which was examined on
December 21, 2016, was, moreover, further weakened by proposals made
by Hungary and Germany. Both countries suggested additional
exemptions for pesticides
that had been deliberately conceived as endocrine disruptors to act
on the sloughing and growth of harmful entities (insects or plants),
at the request of major pesticide producers such as BASF, Bayer, and
Syngenta. Lacking the support of the 28 member countries, notably
France, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands, they were not
approved.

A
race against the clock has now begun. The European Commission has in
fact recognized that its decision to limit the impact of regulations
intended to protect people from endocrine disrupters was influenced
by pressures from the EU’s trading partners, with whom it was
negotiating. At stake for these countries is the possibility of
exporting food and other products to the European market, despite the
fact that their own protection norms are weaker. In an internal
note from August 2015, the
Commission speaks of an “aggressive and well-orchestrated
attack” by the United States, Canada, and other countries.
Insisting that this measure represented an obstacle to trade, the
opposition from these countries clearly suggested the risk of trade
action.

American
and Canadian Pressure

According
to the same investigation
by Le Monde,
the United States, beginning in late June 2013, exerted pressure
within the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the committee dealing
with technical obstacles to trade, with encouragement from American
lobbyists and the pesticide
industry (CropLife America). Canada, along with other countries, then
joined the United States in its battle against the EU’s overly
protective approach. Since March 2015, Ottawa has, for its part,
continuously challenged this approach at every WTO meeting.

In
July 2016, a month after new criteria were published, the European
Commission officially
acknowledged, before the ambassadors of concerned partner countries
(Canada, the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay), that it
had no mandate to deviate from the approach defined in the pesticide
regulations, which are based on the precautionary principle. But it
sought to offer reassurance by showing that the exceptions introduced
into the proposal were intended as a “response to concerns
expressed by the ambassadors.”

If
the goal of reaching a trade agreement with Canada and the United
States led the Commission to water down its proposal in order to
appear conciliatory, is it still be possible to definitively adopt
effective and constraining regulations now that these accords have
been ratified?

This
was the question
posed by 35 NGOs to the
members of the European Parliament’s environment committee,
when, on January 12, they voted on the agreement between the European
Union and Canada, prior to the full parliament’s vote in
mid-February. When CETA goes into effect, it could well place the EU
in an even weaker situation and require it to give priority to
commercial interests over public health and environmental concerns.
The letter’s signatories fear that the agreement’s
provisions concerning technical barriers to trade (chapter 4), health
and phytosanitary measures (chapter 5), and regulatory cooperation
(chapter 21) could enhance Canada’s influence over the European
decision-making process relating to endocrine disruptors as well as
many other realms. The agreement would, moreover, give Canada and
Canadian-based companies (such as Monsanto) new tools for directly
challenging European or member-state regulations in this domain.

The
stakes: a European standard for citizens’ protection

The
European Union’s initiative against endocrine disruptors is
particularly important, in that it represents a first attempt to
propose a legal definition of these substances. Through this
unprecedented regulation, it thus has the opportunity to set a new
standard for citizens’ protection that could impose itself on
the rest of the world. Yet what will become of the European measures
currently under discussion if CETA, ratified by the European
Parliament in February, goes into effect on March 1?

While
nothing is written in stone, the revelations of transatlantic
pressures relating to these measures make it reasonable to assume the
worst. They illustrate, in any case, how current trade negotiations
play a role in undermining efforts to advance environmental and
health regulations. When they are consulted on the ratification of
CETA, members of the European Parliament’s environment
committee will have an opportunity to demand a completely different
approach. By giving the text the go-ahead, they have given up on the
idea of subjecting European trade policy to respect for the
environment, the imperative of fighting climate change, and the
promotion of human rights.